Source: Graduate Photography Online 2012 - BA Selections

This year we bring you a number of special bonus selections - chosen from the 2012 BA Submissions. We asked some of the Directors, from those courses who participated in 2012, to choose their favourite set of work. The only condition we set was that the work they chose had to be from a course other than their own.

David Williams has a fine art background with an international exhibition record. Before relocating to the UK he spent nine years in Paris working with photography in the fashion and advertising industries. At Sheffield Hallam University, he continues to build upon his exhibition record as both an artist and curator. David heads 'The SI Project' (Shifting Image) which is a global project structuring a database aiming to facilitate autonomous self-representation and horizontal dialogue through the use of digital technologies.

Selected Photographer:

Selector's Comment: 'Pick only one that you like... not the best in any definitive form'. An easy task... not so! I like it all. There is something though, that keeps giving me pause as I pass through the pages of Source Graduate Online. A cardinal principle in photographic practice is light control. In 'A Philosophical Enquiry' Edmund Burke observes: "Mere light is too common a thing to make a strong impression on the mind, and without a strong impression nothing can be sublime. But such a light as that of the sun, immediately exerted on the eye, as it overpowers the sense, is a very great idea... Extreme light, by overcoming the organs of sight, obliterates all objects, so as in its effect exactly to resemble darkness... Thus are two ideas as opposite as can be imagined reconciled in the extremes of both; and both, in spite of their opposite nature, brought to concur in producing the sublime." (Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry, Oxford University Press, (2008) 3rd Ed, Section XIV pp.73-74) Melissa Tullett seduces viewers into her soft and beautiful landscape imagery. One blissfully drifts into the sensuous image. A realization occurs, the expected horizon line has been removed. A sense of the unknown, or an anxious expectation of what might or might not be found, is stimulated. The erasure creates an intense light that displaces the assumed, nourishing darkness. Tullet's work aptly titled, 'aphairesis', utilizes this concept of negation to achieve a shift outside the limitations of the horizon. This work agrees with Burkes above suggestion. Reconciliation/Concurrence is taking place.